All That Glitters
by Jolie en Rose
Summary: How can one innocent weekend turn into a crippling illness? Please R&R!


**Disclaimer: I do not own the Clique.**

Have you ever been lied to? It may have been a harmless white lie, like the other person didn't know why there was no more chocolate ice cream in your freezer or they didn't know how your favorite sweater got a stain on it. But sometimes a lie can be a little bit more serious, like they didn't hear their cell phone ring or they will definitely give you that money back. Well, the reason why I'm driving all the way from Westchester to Atlantic City in the dead of night all started with a little lie.

Massie had always had an obsessive personality, ever since I first met her when we were thirteen. She always needed to have the newest Marc Jacobs bag or Christian Louboutin shoes. At the time I didn't really pay much attention to it, I was way too busy being Derrick Harrington, star goalie/ hot commodity. I just thought she was high-maintenance and in a weird way I thought it was even a little cute. Of course as we grew older her passions ran deeper and more expensive; she was a regular at Fashion Week before she could even drive, and had numerous offers to be a model for different tongue-twisting brand names. It seemed innocent enough, but the truth was, Massie wasn't in it for the stuff, she was in it for the thrill.

The real story begins on Massie's twenty-first birthday. Of course my girl was part of one of the most elite socialite groups in New York so this wasn't her day to taste her first drop of alcohol. So instead, the girls flew to Vegas for a taste of the slots. They weren't there too long, just the weekend and apparently they all broke even or even spilled over a little bit. Massie on the other hand won a thousand dollars.

Now one measly thousand wasn't going to change her life, she made that if her SHOE made a public appearance. But, what you have to understand is she only played two hundred. Whether you're playing for pennies or millions, making a 500% profit is pretty exciting. I smiled as she told me with true euphoria in her eyes about her stay and her winnings. I remembered my first slot a few months prior and just congratulated her. No harm done.

Well, apparently the girls loved their weekend in the desert so much that they decided to make it a more casual excursion. I even went a few times, I had to admit the girls picked some gorgeous hotels to vacation in. Nobody ever won very much, and even when they didn't it didn't really matter very much, they were young, rich, and hot. Money was absolutely no object. Plus, I even know that there's just something about the hotel chandeliers, the ringing slots, the rainbow lights that is just so glamorous and indulgent. You can just get lost in yourself. And I believe that is exactly what happened to my darling Massie Block.

It was about three or four months after that first trip that Massie made her first "me time" trip to Las Vegas. I thought it was funny that she had secretly jetted away, even if it was just for the weekend. She had just been named the new Guess Girl and she had been working extremely hard on a lot of photo shoots. She needed the time away. Between the spontaneous plane tickets and her time alone she was out twelve hundred, but of course I didn't know that at the time. She blamed luck. She swore it was just a fluke, so she went back less then two weeks later where she lost another five hundred. She then decided that flying off to Nevada was ridiculous and their games were rigged, so she moved on to a new passion- the lottery.

She started out with those silly one dollar scratch off tickets, winning a fifty every now and again. I've never been big on scratch offs myself, but every now and again I'd get in with her. She'd only get five at a time, five dollars. It was just another part of the day, like the morning Starbucks run. The only quirk was that soon dollar tickets weren't satiating her. She quickly moved on to 20, 30, even 50 dollar cards. She would still only buy a few, but 5 dollars is still different then 250, even if you are Massie Block, and that was only once. Once a day soon turned to twice or three times a day. She was easily dropping over five hundred dollars before she even got to her Vogue interviews or various fashion shows, not counting if she played any numbers that day, which grew more and more seldom as the days passed.

Of course, expensive pieces or cardboard with big promises don't offer quite the same thrill as a casino. She and the girls planned to have a mini vacation, but instead they decided to shuttle to Atlantic City. Half the travel, twice the fun. They reserved some luxury suites at Trump's latest model and packed their designer duffels. She easily lost a cool thousand the first night giving the slots another try (stopping every now and again to check the Powerball). Then on that very trip Massie met her midnight poison- poker.

Whether or not she won any of her games is still an eluded mystery to me, but I do know that things went downhill. Refusing to relive her Vegas stint, Massie started playing online with her credit card up. I'm convinced she lost at lest ten thousand over the next five or six months on her computer, I don't even want to think about her little pink receipts. Well, somehow it got out that Massie Block enjoyed poker, so she was invited to compete in the Celebrity Poker Tournament. Decked out in her tight little designer outfit she went head to head with Leo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck, and a bunch of other big name superstars. I proceeded to watch her on ESPN with a slight grin on my face; she was definitely the best-looking one there.

While making her rounds Massie won a few times but I now realize as I look back on the event one dangerous detail, she never folded. Okay, that's not exactly dangerous because everybody has their pride, but I knew she was in it for more then pride. She was in it for validation. To her demise, the only thing that was validated was a huge bill in the mail, a lump some of at least a hundred grand. She never told me the exact sum, but I have my instincts.

Crushed by her defeat, Massie went on to "practice" more, which meant plenty of time on the Internet along with as many trips to Atlantic City or Yonkers Raceway as possible. She was gracefully replaced with a new girl by Guess (new year, new model) but I know that she didn't get another job. Despite her agent getting many offers from labels and makeup companies across the board, Massie was too busy validating. As she continued to attempt to replenish the money she had lost, she was only drained more. That in turn made her play more to fix the even bigger gap. She was still young, she was still hot, but she was also severely crippled.

I knew something was wrong, but I didn't speak up out of fear that she'd get her feelings hurt. I kept giving her an extra month to find more work, an extra few weeks to start up again. But that never happened, and before I knew it, I had let six months slip through my fingers. I knew I had to do something. So one day I went over to her apartment and I saw just how bad it had gotten. She was on her laptop, bloodshot eyes, hair a mess, with her wastebasket filled with a bunch of different envelopes- bills, notices, debts- all unopened and unpaid.

"Mass, what's all this?" I looked at her, so pained.  
"Nothing." she waved me off, her eyes never leaving the screen.

I just stood there for a minute taking everything in. I then sat next to her and shut the laptop off. She screamed; she had had a winning hand. She scrambled to reboot the system but I swiped it and just looked at her. She glared as she tried to wrestle it back, desperate to save the memory. I told her she needed help. She screamed. She shoved. She denied. I remained a stone; I was determined to not let this chance slip from me. I told her I wanted to get her out of it. She told me there was nothing to get out of, but the tears forming in her eyes spoke volumes. She melted into me and just started sobbing. She knew better then me that she was in a hole, something Massie Block would never expect.

I just let her cry. The whole story soon spilled out about how much she lost after all of those excursions, how her agent had even stopped calling, how she couldn't even get a tax refund because of her "winnings." She had even had some bad investments along the way that I had never known of. And of course she would never let anyone see her as less then perfect, so she continued to buy designer and shower her friends with elaborate gifts, even a brand new gas-guzzling Cadillac in one case. I rubbed her back and told her I was going to help her. She looked up at me with her eyes reddened, her makeup smeared and asked me the question that stabbed me in the heart...was I going to give her money?

As much as I wanted it to be just that simple, I knew that wasn't the solution. The Bible tells us that if you give a man a fish he's fed for a day, but if you teach him how to fish he can feed himself for a lifetime. This was my opportunity to throw Massie the reel she desperately needed. I told her I was going to bring her to rehab.

She started screaming again, but the hysterics really didn't last very long. She was exhausted; she'd been living in this high-stress hell for a very long time- way to long. She obliged. I told her we would go to the clinic the very next day, and we did. But first, I emptied that overflowing wastebasket and sat with her as she opened every single one of them. Many of them dated back up to four months prior, she had been cleaning house. Some however were much more recent with more relevant balances. It sickened me to see how many of the envelopes had the little blue, green, and red poker chip insignia where the stamp belonged. She owed them more then my rent for a year, but I knew I wasn't the one to pass judgments. She was checked in first thing the next morning.

Right before the administrators asked me to leave Massie looked up at me, saddened, but asked me to not tell anybody where she was. I knew she was completely humiliated about how far she'd been reduced, so I agreed. And I didn't. They didn't let me see her once because she was only in for a month, so I often worried about her. The day she was checked out I waited in front of the clinic with a huge bouquet of roses. She hugged me and told me that she was going to start GA immediately; the clinic had already gotten her on a roster. She then looked me in the eyes and told me she was never going to gamble again. Somehow I believed her.

I was so proud when I was able to go to her one-year "graduation" celebration in the school. I thought back about her the year prior and I had to admit she looked and seemed much better. I knew she was now signed on with Miu Miu and really getting her life back together. She told me she felt so much better with this infectious little smile on her face that all I really wanted to do was kiss her. She then promised me again that she was going to stay clean, no more obsessive spending.

That was three weeks ago. The last time I saw her was a few days ago for a lovely dinner. She even offered to pay as a celebration to her new life. But of course, being the gentleman I am, I simply couldn't allow it. I had even just seen her picture on the pack of my Us Weekly when I got the call. She had been sitting home reflecting on all of the progress she'd made, how hard she'd been working. She thought she could stay in control. So she caught the bus to Atlantic City and made camp at the poker tables again. So here I am now, driving through the highway at 2 AM, about to confront my love.

It never feels good to be lied to. Even as I navigate these shadowed roads I know what's waiting for me on the other side is going to be a mess. I know there's never going to be a clear-cut solution to this. But sometimes, despite the lies we hear and the guilt we endure, we have to put it all aside for the sanity that is ignorance.


End file.
